• Society

When the Earth Gives Us a Home: Being Aware of the Planet We Live on 

• By Michelle Vachon
• February 22, 2024 7:10 PM

PHNOM PENH — Walking into the installation currently exhibited in the Sa Sa Art Projects gallery is somehow like becoming reacquainted with Nature through its beauty but also its nearly-magical sides.

There is the soft sound of running water one hears near a river, a gentle light leaving parts of the installation set on soil from a riverbank in the twilight, objects and images of humans today and in the past. These range from traditional vases and musical instruments, a round panel of lacquer work floating, to a video being shown, and a neon feature providing muted light among thin tree branches. All this creating a gentle, mysterious atmosphere in which are mixed the familiar and the unexpected. 

The artist who designed this installation is Truong Cong Tung who grew up in Dak Lak, among the minorities of the Central Highlands in Vietnam. His work was selected by a jury of museum curators and art critics to be exhibited in several countries as the winner of the Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant of the Han Nefkens Foundation. 

“In my work, I adjust to the material from the Earth and water,” Tung said, of the country where his work is exhibited. So, for Phnom Penh, he went to get water from the Mekong river and soil from its bank. “Soil and water is the way to connect with people around the world,” he said. “People have the same ‘language,’ the same…Earth.” 

Setting up a work that amounts to staging a universe in a small space with a long list of objects plus a video takes some planning. But this was done fast and without the difficulties that such installation might have involved, said Vuth Lyno, artistic director of SaSa Projects. “He sent huge luggage by bus first…extremely organized, all packed neatly,” he said. “So once Tung and his brother Truong Minh Tú [who serves as his assistant] were here, we unpacked everything together and installed. The process was extremely fast. This, this, that, and it was done.”

Tung named his installation “The Desoriented Garden…A Breath of Dream.” And it actually is all this: slightly mysterious but also inviting, as if saying to the visitor no need to comprehend, just jump in. 

“This installation is extremely connected and also very present, like it’s here and it’s now,” Lyno said. “It’s not something, like, far away, abstract…his work is about cosmology, his work is about coexistence, it’s about time, it’s about how one would relate to another human being, animals, plants, spirits, water, air, earth, wind, what not. 

“So I think that is…extremely moving, poetic and beautiful…something we all should learn from, we all should be aspiring to,” Lyno said. 

From left, Truong Cong Tung, Vuth Lyno and Han Nefkens speak on the exhibition’s opening night at the Sa Sa Projects gallery on Jan. 26, 2024. Photo: Rotha Raksa

Truong Cong Tung attended the Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University, graduating in 2010 in lacquer painting in Vietnam. As a member of the Art Labor collective whose artists link visual arts and social/life sciences in their works, he has exhibited as part of the group as well as individually in his country and abroad numerous times over the years. “Art for me is the way to connect with nature, with my hometown, with my community, with my family,” Tung said. 

The Han Nefkens Foundation, which provided Tung the grant to create this installation and the Sa Sa Projects gallery to exhibit it, is a private non-profit organization established in the mid-2000s and based in Spain. “I have been involved in the art world for 25 years,” said Han Nefkens who came to Phnom Penh for the opening of the exhibition. Originally from the Netherlands and a writer, he said, “I started out as a collector, knowing from the beginning that what I bought would have to be shared with other people. So, I collected together with museums.” 

After the foundation had been set up, Nefkens said, “at one point, we decided to focus just on video art.” So the Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant was established in 2023. This involved establishing partnerships with museums and institutions to have them exhibit the work of the winning artist, and assembling an international jury of art critics, curators and artists to select the winning works, he said.

In the case of the grant awarded to Tung in 2023, Nefkens said, “[jury members] were very quickly convinced that Tung should be the one to get the grant. There was no difficult discussion about it.”

Tung was then given one year and a grant to produce a work. His installation was first exhibited in Vietnam at San Art in Ho Chi Minh City. After Cambodia, it will be exhibited at the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok, the Museion in Italy, the Busan Museum of Art in South Korea, and the Prameya Art Foundation in India. 

Tung’s installation “The Disoriented Garden…A Breath of Dreams” is exhibited at Sa Sa Art Project until April 4.  

 Sa Sa Art Project is located at 47 Street 350 (off Street 95), in Phnom Penh. 

For information: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sasaartprojects/ 

Tel.: (855) 011-954-018 -- email: [email protected] 

The video installation of artist Truong Cong Tung combines elements of nature with objects created by people past and present. Photo: Rotha Raksa